I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. I have a ton of respect for everyone here. I will take any advice to heart. I'm ready to take my website endevours to a new level. I've been avoiding ecommerce for fear of the unknown. I get a bit bogged down trying to connect the dots. I'm sure a lot of you have been doing this for a long time so perhaps you don't remember your first go at it. I want to sell computer products. Part of me thinks about doing the easy thing and just doing Amazon. 4% and 1 day cookie to me is a slap in the face. I'm not sure if I can make 8-10% profit on a sale, but even that to me is more worth my while. I don't know what is realistic at this point. Is dropshipping my best and least hassle free option? Should I contact a local wholesaler and make arrangements with them? Arranging shipping and dealing with returns etc seems a bit overwhealming to me. I looked into Yahoo small business. Seems like ecommerce with training wheels so perhaps that is my best option? I think I'm looking for the least hassle and least time consuming ecommerce. If you remember any good websites or articles that got you into ecommerce, I'm all ears. Let me know, I would really appreciate the guidance. Thanks to anyone who knows where I'm at on this and is willing to advise me on anything. Cheers!
I would advise you to deal directly with online dropshipper company coz its hard to find local wholesaler which will handle the sales of low amount sales. You can try worldwidebrand
If you do dropshipping you might also consider ebay. Also if you do dropshipping you can sell more than one catagory of things. Ebay is good to test the market. If it sells good on ebay it will sell period. If you can't sell it on ebay then it won't sell period. Once you find products that sell then I would create a website and to start to sell with it on google adwords or SEO tecniques Everything is a process....you won't make a million dollars overnight...start with baby steps and then take larger steps. Don't give up, whatever you do don't give up.
You first need to determine what kind of business are you starting. 1) How much time are you willing to invest 2) How much money are you willing to invest If this is something part time and you don't already have a brick and mortal, then you have some options about how you want to proceed. The hard part is not the actual selling, its the how you are going to sell. Are you going to sell through ebay, and other intermediaries, or are you going to set up a website and sell straight to the consumer. If your going to the ebay route, then if I were you I would have to establish a name first. You will have to study the market and see how often, much are you going to sell stuff for. I am guessing that you are going to have some pretty hot cometition on eBay. You might want to use your budget to sell at cost or even a little bit under, until you establish a name for yourself and buyers start trusting you. If your going to build your own website, then i would not even bother about "selling" products. First you need to build a website that gets traffic and converts. After that you can worry about monetizing. Whether you should go with dropshippers or wholesale, I would usually suggest wholesale, but since you picked a technology sector, then you might want to dropship. The reason for this (and this I know from studying theory and is not from personal experience) is that computer/technology products have a very high probability of the price fluctuating in a very short period of time, so you might get screwed. Good luck